Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/53

Rh It is interesting to remember in this connection the Aryan myth according to which the gods allowed the heavenly soma-drink, the Vedic prototype of the Grecian nectar, to be brought down to earth by a falcon. In illustration of this subject Kuhn quotes two Vedic hymns (R. iv. 26), (R. iv. 27), in the first of which occurs the following passage:—"The speeding falcon, the strong bird, allied to the gods, brought the quickening, invigorating soma from afar, stealing it from highest heaven."

When Athena and Apollo

they remind us of the two birds who sit in friendly fashion upon the summit of the soma-bearing tree of the Vedas. Thus, too, she sends a heron to greet Ulysses and Diomede; they recognized the cry, and rejoiced in the divine message (x. 275). Welcker detects a figurative allusion to meteoric fact in the epithets and, by which the Homeric Athena is distinguished.

If we turn now to the Athena of Æschylus, the grand impersonation of the wisdom, benignity, and might of her father, we recognise, as before, the emergence of the classic ideal from the symbolizing tendencies of the earlier nature-worship. Seldom has the imagination of poet been haunted by a more majestic image than the Athena of the Eumenides; and